Baptism

Though we are not a captial B “Baptist” church, we are credobaptists, meaning that we believe baptism is for those who repent from their sin and confess their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you are interested in being baptized,

  • Please download a Membership form here, complete it, then give it to an elder.
  • Schedule an interview with one of the elders.
  • The elder who interviewed you will make a recommendation to the rest of the elders, and then
  • We will schedule a date for baptisms.

A couple additional things:

Baptism is an ordinance of the church, and so we believe that it is best for pastors to do the baptizing rather than fathers or other family members.

Baptism marks the beginning of one’s life as a disciple of Christ, and making our calling and election sure takes the rest of our lifetime (2 Peter 2:10). A believer in Christ obeys Christ’s command to be baptized, which inaugurates living by faith, which continues by learning to obey all that Christ commanded (Matthew 28:19-20).

Baptism is what we’re shooting for like making it onto the on-ramp. Baptism isn’t the destination; there’s a lot of road ahead. Everyone gets dunked at their lowest level of spiritual maturity; disciples mature more and more as soon as they dry off. So it’s not just inevitable to baptize a Christian who is young in his faith, it’s appropriate. But that means that we, as parents and as the body of Christ, must continue the work of making disciples post baptism.

Some things are one-and-done. When it comes to baptism, in most cases, once is enough. When it comes to remembering our baptism, that can’t happen enough.

Christians are exhorted to remember their baptism for sake of resisting temptation to sin (Romans 6:1-4). That means that we are not necessarily waiting for someone to “prove” that he can resist temptation before giving him the weapon, so to speak, as part of his fight for sanctification. At least one implication of this is that we are willing to baptize younger kids who can express their faith. This sermon on Confessing Faith explains more and is intended to be a useful reference for parents raising their kids to be Christians.

This sermon on Declaring Allegiance also reminds us of our identity: we are Christ’s.

And see here for some of the baptisms services we’ve had at TEC.